


A Simple Life

by RenaRoo



Series: Angst War [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3994429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenaRoo/pseuds/RenaRoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim Drake is living a simple life in one of the worst parts of Gotham. He makes the best of it, though. He makes for himself the only life he's ever known...</p><p>He thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Simple Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rahn (Rahndom)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahndom/gifts).



> Prompt: ( @rahndom ) Passing this Angst War prompt for anyone who is interested. Tim Drake forgets everything and everyone, save one person (up to you who and the rest of his family’s reaction)
> 
> A/N: Kinda played around and tweaked this one a bit. Hope that’s okay.

Waking up was the worst sensation he had ever felt.

It was the _only_ sensation he had ever felt.

Every cell in his body exploded at once, acid filled and frothing with anger. He could have sworn bones twisted and organs shifted -- that blood, coagulated and sluggish, ripped through his veins like rapids. Every centimeter was violent pain and red hot fury coiled ugly inside of him.

If this was living, he very much wished he had never been born. Screaming and clawing.

When the blur of his world settled to a muted green, when he could see the ornately clad man before him, he wondered if this was what meeting God was like.

"Do you remember me, Timothy?" the man asked, eyes pools of jade. There wasn't even time to answer before the man's face drew into a dark scowl. "That is most disappointing."

His world was black again for a long time.

*

Tim never has to set his alarm clock for eight, he simply wakes when he's supposed to.

Every morning has been the same for nearly as long as he can remember. He rolls out from under the sheets, turns off the running playlist on his mp3, and goes to brush his teeth. He grooms himself, tucks the shock of white hair over his right ear underneath the rest of his hair, gets dressed, and makes himself a breakfast of toast and orange juice. He reads the Gotham newspaper and then gets ready for work.

He's greeted when he leaves his flat by his next door neighbor Pam. She's a single mom who goes to her morning workout after she drops the kids off. It happens to be at the same time Tim is leaving for work and their upstairs neighbor, a college dropout named Jake who sometimes invites himself over to Tim's place for pizza and discussions about music, is going down the stairs. Tim's never sure if he wants to know details about what Jake's doing with his day so he never bothers to ask.

For the most part, everyone on his whole block is pleasant. Everyone Tim knows, in any case.

He goes to work at a local mom and pop store where he'll work from 10:00 am until closing at 5:30 pm. He stocks shelves, unloads trucks, checks the unprocessed food for customers, sometimes even works register. The owners let him take the bagged groceries to some customers' houses who request it and Tim's allowed to keep his tips off the books.

There's a married woman who Tim sees twice a week to drop off her groceries. He tries not to let it get to him that she tips him outrageously for basically bringing her eggs and milk and keeping her husband on his toes.

Sometimes, after he closes shop and sweeps and mops, the owners ask him to stay upstairs at their apartment for dinner for a "good day's work." Most of the time he goes back to his flat and sustains himself on ramen noodles, the occasional splurge pizza, or a fast food run. He'll fall asleep to a playlist of his choice on repeat because it does wonders on chasing his frequent nightmares away.

Today, as Tim settles on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sits at the window seat of his flat, marks a fairly regular day in a simple life. The only life he's ever known.

The only life Tim has ever known dates back eight months when he woke up -- the real time -- in a hospital bed.

*

Waking, choked on a tracheal tube, to a nurse screaming in shock was Tim's real first memory.

The medical staff explained it to him once he was calmed down and lucid. The nightmares of a cultish setting, a rebirthing by drowning in waters that felt like fire, the man who called him "Timothy" were the frantic gatherings of his splintered mind.

Timothy Drake, an orphaned college student at Gotham University, suffered a massive and rare brain hemorrhage near his hippocampus. It was a miracle his roommate found him before he bled out internally.

He was in a coma for a year, and in the time that it took for his brain to reboot itself, it could not recover even a sliver of his memories. His medical expenses, while paid for and leaving him debt free, have drained the once substantial sum of inheritance his parents left him.

With enough money to establish a simple life for himself in a little less than decent neighborhood, Tim has to live the rest of his life. Alone. He has no family, no friends after a year of being comatose. No one to really tell him who Tim Drake is supposed to be.

"What can I do with that?" he asked.

The doctor's jade eyes glimmered, Tim thinks he'll always remember them. "Anything you want, Timothy."

*

Tim's boss let him take home some of the less fresh fruit today with no charge, nagging him about his boney frame and tiny butt. Considering Mrs. Arnette pinched his butt today, Tim's less concerned about it, but he took the fruit all the same.

Holding his brown bagged score in one hand, Tim fishes for his mailbox key in his front pocket and checks for his apartment's mail. It's empty, again, which causes Tim to slam it shut.

Pam helped him apply for his first credit card last month and he's not heard a single thing back, and his phone calls to check on the process continue to be redirected.

He angrily grabs a red delicious from his bag and takes a bite out of it. His stomach settles a bit and Tim thinks that, next time he gets a check-up, he'll mention how his anger management exercises have done wonders for him since he first woke up in the hospital. It's a far more pleasant topic than their usual stuff.

Making his way up the stairs two steps at a time, Tim thinks he might offer some of the fruit to Pam and her kids -- they're too ripe and Tim knows he'll never eat them all before they go bad -- when he notices that a large, bulking man in a black turtleneck and slacks is talking to Pam at her door. He's a handsome guy, dark skin and fetching features -- Tim hopes he's good to the kids because Pam's love life has been lackluster since they became neighbors.

He curves around the part of the hallway they're taking up to talk, adjusting his bag into one arm. Biting hard enough on the apple to keep it in his mouth, Tim fishes in his pocket for his apartment key when he overhears,

" -- it is an _impossibility_ for your neighbor's name to be Timothy Jackson Drake, I am merely asking you what you know about him as a person before I confront him for identity theft."

"I dunno _what_ Tim's middle name is, but his name's Tim Drake as far as I've ever --" Pam's eyes flicker to Tim's door and meet his, equally surprised. She's always said he gets around noiselessly. "Tim?"

"Mmhhhff," Tim returns at first before kicking up his knee to balance his bag on so his free hand can remove the apple from his drooling mouth. He quickly wipes his lips with the sleeve of his hoodie. "Hey, Pam."

The man standing beside her turns, letting Tim see his face for the first time directly. He has very distinct eyes, a burning midnight blue, and there's a a strong-set jaw on him. He's rather intimidating. There's no way in hell anyone could forget him.

Tim's never seen him before in his life.

Upon laying eyes on Tim, the man blanches, his composure dropping as he backs into the hall wall behind him.

"Uh," Tim says with a blink, looking to Pam only to have his confusion returned to him. "Can… I help you, sir?"

For a moment, it seems like the man is going to continue gaping like a fish, when suddenly a switch goes off.

Before Tim can even blink, the man is on him, grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him -- _hard_ \-- into the door frame of Tim's own apartment. Tim feels the air knocked right out of his lungs. He can't even think of how to catch his breath, though, because those fiery eyes are boring into him.

"You are _not_ him -- who are you!? Who sent you here?" the man snarls in Tim's face. "Who do you think you--"

Suddenly, the man goes stiff just as Tim thinks he might be hyperventilating. His heart is thundering in his ears when he notices the other man is reaching to the side of Tim's face and touches where Tim self-consciously knows that damn white lock is.

"My god," the man whispers, looking slightly ill.

"I'm calling the police!" Tim hears Pam scream before there's a slam of a door.

Under the slightest bit more pressure, Tim is certain his ribs will crack. But the man is just staring at him, completely bewildered and squeezing Tim's shoulders _harder still._

Just when Tim thinks that his life should begin flashing before him and just how sad that reel of footage is going be, probably less than a second long, there's a blur of motion and Jake has leaped from seemingly nowhere to kick Tim's attacker in the head. The man recovers and ensues combat right in the hallway Tim has only seen on movies occasionally watched by Pam's kids.

It's too much to take in and rather than risk being caught in the crossfire, Tim pulls his keys out, opens his door, slams it behind him, and locks every possible lock he has in record time.

Back against the door, heart attempting to skip out of his chest, Tim slides down to his floor, every molecule shaking.

He has no idea what just happened or what Jake has been doing every day to move the way he did, but he knows Pam is calling the police. It makes Tim a little more comforted considering there is no possible way he can move his body to get to his phone.

Instead, he puts his head in his hands and feels like screaming. He hasn't screamed himself hoarse in months, but he thinks if there's an excuse his doctor will take it would be this.

These freak outs take a lot out of Tim, he doesn't _like_ having them but it's not like he's going to have a choice on this one. He loses track of time, his eyes glazing over in an acid green haze ( _all an illusion, your mind is making sense of things that it can't process and it causes you imagine colors,_ people, _things_ ).

There's no way for Tim to know how long he has been sitting on the floor when the man in black crashes through his second floor window and approaches him.

Uselessly, Tim tries to kick out, push himself back further away only to ram himself harder against the door. "No! Please, oh, god no --"

"Dra…" the man stops halfway, looking distinctly less sure of himself. He swallows. _"Timothy_ … it's me..."

"Wh-why do you know my name! Oh, god -- HELP!" Tim cries out, turning enough to grab for his doorknob. _Stupid._ It's locked.

"I am sorry, brother," the man says as he approaches, face solemn.

There's a blur of motion and Tim feels an acute pinch before his world goes black again.

*

Without the whitenoise of music or the limpness of complete exhaustion, Tim is left to his mind's devices. And over the past eight months, Tim has learned his mind is a very, very cruel place to be.

In his dreams, Tim disappointed many people.

The faces of everyone he met are blank, expressionless and unrecognizable. They pitter in and out, one's impact overlapped with another. But each mark was no less cruel on Tim's tortured psyche.

Dad was the only person, Tim thinks, that managed to find someone of worth in the boney mess Tim was in his dreams.

People, ones who Tim loved and mattered, disappeared and there was always the sickening sense that they left because of Tim himself. Of something he did.

Dreams that began with this parade of faceless, nameless accusations always ended the same. Tim, alone with his Dad, sitting on a rooftop. It was the first time they had seen each other in a long time -- according to his dreams. There was a hint of disappointment when his father asked him something Tim can't now recall.

They are the worst to have, especially when Tim wakes with a name on the tip of his tongue that isn't "Jack."

*

Tim feels like his body is jello and his head is throbbing. What little sensation is allowed to his form alerts him to the fact that his cheeks are cold and wet and his throat hoarse. He hasn't had a dream that emotionally exhausting in almost two months.

So much for progress.

When seconds roll by and Tim becomes more aware that the exhaustion of nightmares can no longer account for how little he can feel or move, his heart picks up its pace and he realizes that his mp3 isn't playing.

The noises he hears are actual people. And Tim is not in the only apartment he's ever lived in.

"How did you do this without telling us?" a man's voice demands, sounding nearly hysterical. "You get alerted that someone's using Tim's identity and you didn't even bother to let your family in on it?"

"I was handling it. I knew how you'd act," another man -- somehow familiar, though Tim can't place it in his state -- returns with a voice like steel. "How _both_ of you would act."

"Not your place," a woman's voice returns, calm yet venomous.

"How would we have acted, Damian? _How?"_

_"Like you are now!"_

"WE'RE ACTING THIS WAY NOW BECAUSE YOU BROUGHT HOME _TIM!"_

"T'at'sss me," Tim slurs, struggling to open his eyes.

"We don't know for sure it's him," the familiar man says lowly. "And if it is, he didn't seem to recognize me."

"How would he have been able to recognize you, Damian? _You scared the hell out of him._ What did you think he was? A sleeper agent?"

"That's still not off the table."

Finally able to concentrate his vision, Tim takes in the situation as best as he can, and can feel his pulse increasing alarmingly. A tug of his hands reveals that he is restricted more than just by his hazy wakefulness. They -- whoever they may be -- are keeping him here. Against his will.

He remembers the man in black and begins shaking.

_He doesn't want to die he doesn't want to die he doesn't want to die_

"He's young. Same as he was…" the woman says softly. "If a Pit, maybe he doesn't know. You are older. Now."

"If it _is_ him, which we have yet to prove past superficial facts," the man, the one who attacked Tim, replies spitefully, "then he has been living in that building and off the books for half a year at this point. He has never made any attempts to contact us. He has never looked in on the people he knew. That is not the Drake I know."

"You don't know what he's tried or not tried, Damian," the first man speaks up, voice more commanding this time. "You're jumping to conclusions."

_"And you are not!?"_

Confused and shaking like a leaf, Tim realizes his breathing has gotten out of his control and is far, _far_ too loud. The fighting, as a result, stops and Tim realizes he is in real danger now. He pulls with all his might at the restraints on his arms and legs, but it's not nearly enough. He gasps for air, it feels like he's about to die.

"Tim!" the first man cries out, and Tim finally sees him as the man runs into the dark room where they have Tim restrained. He's a handsome guy, a leaner build with longer hair and lighter skin. He looks torn for some reason as he drops next to the cot Tim is on and firmly grabs Tim's forearms. "Timmy, Tim. Stop, you're hurting yourself! It's okay! You're okay! You're safe now!"

"S-safe!?" Tim cries out hysterically. "You-you've tied me down to-to this _bed_ and you're telling me I'm safe!?"

All Tim wants is to live long enough to go back to his fat one last time. To sleep dreamlessly to the tunes of his mp3.

He's not sure what he was like before his coma, but he's sure he didn't deserve to go like _this._

"It's only a precaution, Tim, don't worry. I didn't agree to it, but I'm sure after we talk this out we'll get you out of there." The man is on the verge of tears, kneeling beside Tim. He reaches over with far too much familiarity and runs his fingers through Tim's hair. "I'm… we're all just so glad to see you, Tim. You have no idea…. how much it hurt when you were…" He stops as Tim's body shakes with sobs. "T-Tim? What's wrong? Why're you--? Tim? Talk to me!"

"P-please don't hurt me," Tim begs, turning his head away from the man's touch. Every hair is sticking up on Tim's body, he can't stop his sobs. "Ohgodohgod. Why do you know my name? Wh-why are you doing this to me?"

He feels the hand leave his head and looks to see the man utterly horrified.

"Tim… don't… don't you know who I am?" he asks. "I'm… I'm your brother."

Breathing unevenly, Tim can't even begin to process that information. He merely shakes his head and trembles under the man's gaze.

The man looks back to a short, Eurasian woman and Tim's kidnapper -- Tim didn't even hear or see them enter the room.

"Cass?" the man beside Tim calls out, sounding utterly heartbroken.

The woman's face is carefully guarded, but her eyes are wet with tears. "It… It _is_ Tim," she says as the tears begin to fall down her face. "But… he does not know us."

*

The dream that was different had Tim on bed rest for the entire first week he was supposed to have left the hospital.

His doctor had gone through all the trouble of arranging some of the last of Tim's inheritance to go toward the flat Tim still inhabits, helped Tim get on his feet after his temper tantrums had ruined his attempts at physical therapy, and generally sold Tim on the idea of a perfectly reasonable, normal and _simple_ life.

Then, the first night Tim spent alone without nurses and doctors running check-ups and diagnostics, Tim slipped into a fever dream from hell.

It started out nicely enough. It even had the warm feel of familiarity, possibly even _memories_ \-- the light green glow of stage lighting, the snugness of a full set of bleachers, and the smell of popcorn wafting through the air.

A man in a fur coat -- Dad? he had a face -- smiled at him then fell in line with the crowds.

The drum rolled, the circus began.

At first, Tim was elated, he watched as the acts took turn, one after the other, until the one he had known, somehow, he was waiting on took the center ring. High above the audience and Tim, the acrobats _soared_ and Tim felt his heart pound with admiration and love for the faceless performers.

Then it all went wrong.

There was the honk of a horn and a squeak of shoes, drawing Tim's attention from the acrobats down to the floor where a bright purple clown, so distinct against the acid washed world, stood with an unearthly wide grin.

"What comes up, ladies and germs," the clown said through crooked teeth, pointing his oversized horn up toward the acrobats, _"Must come down!"_

The clown squeezed the horn only instead of an obnoxious noise a gun blasted the acrobats out of the air.

"No!" Tim cried only to find himself facing the same horn and devilish grin.

"Can you laugh for Papa, Junior?" the clown asked before there was a blast--

Tim screamed, kicking and clawing his bed until he tore through sheets and the skin of his arms alike. He cried and howled until an ambulance was called and he was brought to the ER with a temperature of 105. He was unable to get himself out of his bed for the rest of the week.

When he moved back to his flat, he went next door to apologize for the disturbance, but was surprised to find the previous tenant had moved out. Pam and her kids invited him over for dinner for the first time.

He met Jake the next week.

It was comforting to have neighbors with the same schedules as him and who got along with him so well. He told his doctor as much during his next check-up. The doctor said he was getting better. Tim believed him.

*

The woman -- Cassandra -- hands him the steaming mug.

After hours of back and forth and breakdowns on Tim's part, they have all exhaustedly reached a point where they can, in their terms, "discuss" what has happened to Tim's simple life.

He sits in a recliner, elbows on his knees and feeling increasingly ill the longer he is under this duress. His shaking is causing the dark liquid of the mug to jump around.

"I-I don't like coffee," Tim says, staring at the liquid, before looking back at her.

She blinks at him, making a desperate attempt to comprehend.

Behind her the younger man -- Damian -- stands against the wall, arms crossed. He shoots a look at the eldest of the trio -- Dick -- like Tim's refusal is some telling sign. Dick, for his part, only looks sad.

"It is hot chocolate," Cassandra says at last. "I… can get you marshmallows?"

Tim, shakes his head, gaze dropping back to the mug. All he can think about is his apartment. "No… thanks."

Cassandra nods before returning to the lounge seat across from Tim's own, sitting beside Dick. When he looks at her, Cassandra takes Dick's hand in her's and holds it tight before letting them fall together between them. He squeezes her hand.

For some reason, it's the saddest thing Tim thinks he has ever seen.

"You think… I'm your brother," Tim repeats slowly, watching them all carefully. "Who was _also_ 'Tim Drake.'"

"Tim Drake-Wayne," Cassandra corrects, a sad smile on her face. She reaches back with her free hand and motions with one finger.

Despite being almost twice the size of the woman, Damian obeys and stands behind the lounge, leaning his hands against the back of it so that his sister could hold his hand as well.

"We are your family," she continues.

"You don't remember any of us?" Dick asks, sounding desperate. "None of us?"

Tim frowns. "The only thing I woke up remembering when I got out of the coma was my name. My first name. And I only remembered it because of… well, a dream."

"A dream?" Damian asks, brow raised.

"It's… cognitive association," Tim attempts to explain, finding strength in his voice the more he hid behind facts and theories and didn't think about the reality of his situation. "My doctor tells me my brain's reconstructing images that, together, are making abstract representations of my memory. Trying to piece things together. It's… all like a giant metaphor. I'll dream of something huge and ridiculous and it's just my brain trying to remember what my first cat's name was."

"What was it?" Damian presses, eyes sharp.

"Damian," Dick warns, turning just enough to give him a look.

"I-I don't know," Tim replies, rubbing his neck. "I don't' even know if I had a cat. I… Most of my _'memories'_ are nonsense. Nightmares. I can't make sense of them. I've… given up on trying for now. It's too stressful."

The three siblings look at him like he's a foreign object.

He's starting to feel like one.

"This doctor, is he the same one who helped you get your apartment in order?" Dick finally asks.

"Yes?" Tim replies, not sure of the relevance. "He's a very nice man, he's been on my case since the hemorrhage. He's… man. He's taken care of me for two years now, I guess."

Again, the three share a look, faces guarded.

"Is it…?" Dick asks, lower than when he addresses Tim directly.

"Considering the League Assassins in the building?" Damian hisses, "It appears so. It's… all beginning to make sense. Especially with…"

Tim snorts, finally taking a sip of his hot chocolate. It draws their attention to him.

He swallows, coughs into his fist a little awkwardly, and looks as apologetically as he can toward them. "Sorry… it's just… I guess I'm glad this is making sense to _someone."_

"Dra--… _Timothy,"_ Damian attempts, "does the name Ra's al Ghul mean anything to you."

Frowning, Tim shakes his head. "I'm telling you, I don't remember anything from before my coma. Even if I _did_ know who you're talking about."

After a long, silent exchange, the siblings finally nod, Dick looking particularly reluctant to do so. He releases Cassandra's hand to allow her to reach underneath the coffee table where she produces a large album. It's a beautiful, very expensive looking book with an embroidered 'W' on its surface.

She flips through the books pages before halting on a large portrait of multiple people in this very sit room.

Curious, Tim leans in to look only for them to carefully hand the album to him.

There, staring back at him, Tim sees himself, not looking a day younger than he does today, standing alongside much, _much_ younger Cassandra, Dick and…

Tim chokes, shooting up to his feet, album hitting the floor.

"Tim!?"

He feels dizzy, like the world around him is tilted off its axis. Everything is making sense and not making sense all at the same time. He sways, falling right into the waiting arms of Dick, who cradles him all the way to gently guiding him to the floor. Tim still feels like his airway is closed off.

"Bruce… It was _Bruce…"_ Tim coughs out, feeling like his head is being stuffed with cotton balls. "All this time, on the-the tip of my tongue. I-I knew _Bruce."_

Dick's pressing kisses against Tim's temple and murmuring in his ear, an alien sensation that Tim cannot even begin to place. Cassandra is beside them, a firm hand on Tim's shoulder, but her head is down. Damian bends over, very carefully picking up the photo album and avoiding looking at any of them.

"Wh-where is he?" Tim asks, trying to pick the pieces of his world back up as best he can. "Where's Bruce?"

If possible, Dick holds him tighter, as if he's scared to let go. Cassandra squeezes his shoulder, head bowed almost reverently.

"Please," Tim presses, looking to each of them before his eyes lock with Damian's. _"Please_ … I-I have to know. He's… he's all I have. He's… he's my _memory_ … I never thought I'd find it again."

Damian's face is pained. He says, "He… Father died, Timothy." Tim suddenly feels his heart drop to his stomach. "He died ten years ago. After you did."

What foothold Tim has left of his life, his loving, simple, rewarding life, flies out from underneath him along with the buried dreams of realizing who he was before he woke up.

*

Tim fell asleep, distraught in the arms of people who might as well have been strangers.

Everything he thought he knew -- what little that already was -- had collapsed beneath his feet.

When he slept, for the first time in ages without distraction and exhaustion to aid him, he had no dreams. No memories.

It was the least pleasant sleep Tim had had in all of his new life.

*

Tim isn't sure what to make of anything anymore. His mind draws a blank at even the proposal of making sense of his new information.

Tim Drake-Wayne will be twenty-seven in two months according to his birth certificate, one that his siblings have on file with several other medical records and adoption papers that charter the life that feels partially like a figment of his imagination.

Yesterday, Tim thought he was turning nineteen in two months. He had been in a coma for a year.

He had been dead for nearly eleven years before that.

When he woke up, he found he didn't have the will to run away, to escape this madness. His life in his apartment with his kindly neighbors, his well-meaning bosses, and his simple pleasures is a hollow shell. It is a dream he can't return to.

And he misses it already. He yearns for it but he could never again return to it. He _knows_ and it's _killing_ him.

Instead, he walks quietly around Dick and Cassandra's sleeping forms, spares a second's thought on where Damian might be or what he would be doing at one in the morning, and re-enters the parlor where his world had come crashing down.

He's not sure how long he has sat there, staring at photos of a life he can't place, before his presence was found unaccounted for.  But he feels Dick come in behind him, place a too-comfortable hand on his shoulder.

It makes Tim sick that someone can love him so much when Tim didn't know them from Adam just hours ago.

"I'm… I'm sorry, Little Brother," Dick manages softly. "I… None of this went well. But it's… you have to understand. Family is everything to us, and for so long it's been the three of us… and sometimes you miss your other loved ones."

Tim hesitates on a picture of what seems to be a young himself and a younger still Dick Grayson. He feels tears of frustration beading up. "You… you missed me?"

"Every instant of every day," Dick says so truthfully that Tim feels pain in his chest. "We all have. And… this… this isn't perfect, and this isn't how any of us would have wanted it… but we love you so much, we _missed_ you so much… Having you back is everything. Even if we have to take it slow."

Bile raises in the back of Tim's throat. "What… what if I don't remember things… ever."

His doctor had told him as much.

His doctor was not a doctor.

Tim's not sure what anything means anymore.

Dick comes around to Tim's side, dropping down to be level with Tim. His eyes shine. "You'll remember. We just… It's going to be a lot of adjustment. For everyone. And I'm sorry it's been so unnerving so far. We'll do better."

Again, Dick's honesty and belief bleeds from his words.

Tim doesn't have it in him to say what he feels.

That he's not so sure, same body or not, that he's the boy in the photographs. That he'll ever be able to place who Dick or Cassandra or Damian really are.

Before he realizes they're even being shed, Tim feels tears fall down his cheeks. "Why did this happen?"

Without hesitation, Dick pulls Tim into a bruising hug, releasing a shaky breath of his own. "I… I don't know why it happened, Tim. But… but it did. And we'll get through this together. You're my brother, and I promise with everything in me I'll do what I can to make you happy again."

Slowly, Tim finds it in him to weakly squeeze the man back. Not saying that he has his suspicions that Tim Drake, with a simple life in a flat, with nice neighbors and kindly bosses, with his mp3's and his ripe fruit, was just fine the way he was.


End file.
